Connected Manufacturing

Today, growth drivers such as technology, sustainability and optimization have once again encouraged the transformation of the manufacturing industry, to become adaptive, fully connected and even cognizant of its own power quality. This transformation is pushed by the globalization of value chains in organizations, with the ultimate goal being, increasing competitive advantage.

Let us look at the image below-

There are various productivity initiatives started either by the government or by industrial consortiums. The initiatives across countries may look different, but the core concepts have minimal differences.

Following are some proven strategies to create similar initiatives –

Promoting innovative factory models and setups through advanced technologies. These objectives are anchored by increasing integration, digitalization and new techniques for automating production. In several instances IoT, additive manufacturing, advanced robotics and cyber-physical systems are headlines

Cultivating a sustainable pipeline of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills that are transferrable across sectors. More recently, and driven by the hype of artificial intelligence, specific skills for data science have come front and center

Sponsoring incubation and co-development by combining industry, technology and service providers, machine builders and OEMs with academic and government organizations. Nationally driven programs often focus on localization of these initiatives while consortia are more cross-border in their designs.

These often provide exchange of experiences, access to test-beds and reference platforms.